It’s my 3rd Mantel of the year, and while this has never been a favourite, it’s still a masterclass in writing claustrophobia, tension and complex characters. I don’t think she was capable of writing a bad book #MyYearWithHM

The extremely brilliant and thoroughly lovely Polly Garnett shot me for The Guardian. Here are some of the outtakes from our session together; all brilliant. I highly recommend working with her.

Great story from Helena Horton and @pippacrerar.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-... Hubris from the English media & the RFU!!

Colin Robinson, the Energy Vampire from What We Do In The Shadows, has a job with the Trump Administration!

Just how bonkers were the legal proceedings issued by recently sanctioned solicitor Andrew Milne as he tried to extract money from, it seems, almost anyone unfortunate enough to be in a contract with him? ➡️ Watch the full episode of Page 94, the Private Eye podcast, on YouTube: youtu.be/pHNuqHyF5M0

A woman returns to New York City to attend the funeral of an old friend in a short story by Mary Gaitskill. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Developing an H.P.V. vaccine was distinctly challenging. A vaccine-schedule change just made the disease easier to prevent. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/8w3FWn

A cartoon by Paul Noth. See all the cartoons in this week’s issue: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Uh2urE

Watching Mandelson's perp walk, I cannot get over how much the reporter sounds like Chris Morris on the Day Today. www.youtube.com/watch?v=angu...

The real scandsl ... with Epstein as a sub-plot. open.substack.com/pub/annpetti...

I'm having a short ride on the West Midlands Railway pride train for the first time

The happier I am when I'm with you, the harder it gets when I am alone, when I am alone

a year is a long time in politics

Virginia Giuffre's family on the arrest of ex-U.K. Ambassador Peter Mandelson: "The contrast with the continued inaction in the United States is undeniable. Survivors deserve transparency, swift investigation, and real justice, no matter who is implicated." Full statement

The cover for this week’s issue is “Winter Whiplash,” by Christoph Niemann. See what’s inside: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/K6bRPL

Fucking grim

This guy gets it.

Pointed but hard to argue with, from @alexshephard.bsky.social's review of EVERYBODY LOSES in @washingtonpost.com:

A cartoon by David Borchart, from 2015. #NewYorkerCartoons

Any word on the Venezuelan head of state Trump kidnapped a few weeks ago?

Ancient Mycenaean computer. Very rare

Rock Against Racism celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Beginning to think it's needed more now than in 1976...

THE CLIMATE ISSUE 🌊 Our Winter 2025-26 issue is out next week! Join us as we celebrate the launch in The Digital Depot, Dublin 8 next Thursday 27th November from 7pm 🎉 This event is free but space is limited and booking essential - book your ticket here: stingingfly.org/product/wint...

@stingingfly.bsky.social Just read Alice Cappelle’s excellent essay in The Climate Issue. Brilliant. It is a very similar scenario in many places in the UK. I lived in northern France for a year as an English language assistant. I wrote an indifferent ‘dissertation’ about the decline of coal-mining.

Salt by Catrin Kean- a Wales Book of the Year. In the 1880s, a Cardiff girl falls for a ship’s cook from Barbados - Mon-Fri 22.45 @BBCRadio4 or listen now @BBCSounds Read by Kezrena James abridged @mirandaemmerson.bsky.social & produced by Fay Lomas & @mair.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Just read @cathamclarke.bsky.social’s piece on Edward Thomas’s Adlestrop in her excellent book A History of England in 25 Poems. So enlightening and informative. Huge poignancy too.

Fiction by #OctaviaEButler #Gogol & Lissa Evans - all on A Good Read, Mon 3pm @BBCRadio4 Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate art museums & galleries & Léa Ypi, professor of politics & philosophy at LSE swap books they love with @harriettsg.bsky.social Producer @elizalomas www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Agatha Christie. Flann O’Brien. Claudia Pineiro. Your regular helping of A Good Read 3pm @BBCRadio4 @harriettsg.bsky.social is joined by writers @tomshakespeare.bsky.social & @martinedwardsbooks.bsky.social to discuss much-loved #books Producer Sally Heaven www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Our Composer of the Week is the pioneering Amy Beach. Donald Macleod explores the life & music of one of the most distinctive American musicians of the early C20th. Each weekday 4pm @BBCRadio3 Produced by Steven Rajam & Sam Phillips #classicalmusic www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

I wonder where Reform’s Zia Yusuf gets his ideas?

Start the Week at 9 on BBC Radio 4: strategy from Odysseus to Barbie, the Hotel Lutetia - a hostel for exiles from Germany, artists, refugees, concentration camp survivors. And London during the war, as depicted in art. God I love my job.

Well done 2026, I knew you had at least one great film in you. Let’s keep this new swing towards the well-written, well-acted, well-executed going please. Thanks in advance, cinema-jaded in East Belfast. #TheSecretAgent

I had a lovely reading in Lurgan this afternoon. Afterwards there ere five different kinds of home baked cake. I should like it to be known I now require five different kinds of cake at every future event.

Here here! 👏👏👏

... Be more Brown - Gordon or Tina ….

Meanwhile the “psychologically flawed” Gordon Brown, having enacted the most redistributive economic policies in the UK for the past 50 years, and saving the UK from full impact of 2008 - is still engaged in acts of public service….9/

Alistair Campbell - podcaster, whose handwringing isn’t enough to erase his role in the WMD narrative. Nick Clegg - enabled the morally repugnant ‘austerity’ initiatives of the Cameron coalition, then covered for the anti-democratic ethical sinkhole Meta, as head of PR, …8/

Where are the psychologically perfect individuals who variously passed judgement on Brown? Peter Mandelson - disgraced ( not the first time) revealed as dishonest, greedy, treacherous to his post and country.Tony Blair - war crimes aside, Board of Peace candidate, undermining UN for 💰7/

This leads me to reflect on how the press (my own paper at the time, The Observer, where I was business editor ) splashed on the ‘psychologically flawed’ briefing, given by a deeply morally dubious Blairite team. The story in some ways holed Brown’s leadership below the waterline 5/

And here is Mandelson emailing Epstein boasting about his role in ushering out Brown www.bbc.com/news/article.... so 4/

Whilst Brown was having his character assassinated by Tony Blair’s closest aides, Mandelson was busy emailing convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that he had ‘persuaded’ Brown to step down as leader of the Labour Party …here is some background www.theguardian.com/politics/win... …/3

…and he was turned down as being an unsuitable co-partner for a coalition government by that other paragon of moral virtue Nick Clegg - who instead formed a coalition with David Cameron ..a decision which accelerated Brexit. 2/

Former UK PM Gordon Brown is providing - voluntarily and not for the first time - information to the police about abuses of power relating to the Epstein files. As PM Brown was briefed against by people such as Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson as being ‘psychologically flawed’ ….1/

Have a reread of the North East sections of Priestley's English Journey and see how it stacks up. I was doing a piece on it for someone a coue years back and never got it finished but it's terrifying at 100 years remove, on paper, be interested to see how what you saw compsres 👌

Well that was one of the most depressing days of photography I’ve ever done. Up there with the Outsiders project on homelessness. Has left me filled with impotent rage.

We have to share with our fellow R4 programmes! Would have loved George on TFB but we may revisit for pbk as he will be great talking about influences and craft. And it made for excellent Start the Week ep!

Listen now to my BBC Radio 4 chat with John Lanchester about new @faberbooks.bsky.social novel 'Look What You Made Me Do' and his three comic novel influences, Evelyn Waugh, Barbara Pym & Kurt Vonnegut! 🎧📚👇 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The fucking Philistines that schedule a Febreeze advert in the most emotional scene of Manchester By The Sea. 3 minutes no less. Fuck! I even have time to type this.